The ISTAF – International Stadium Festival Berlin – is a late-summer track and field athletics event that acts as a climax for the outgoing season. Here, crowds of up to 70,000 spectators in Berlin's Olympic stadium can cheer on Olympic and world champions fresh from their summer triumphs as well as international stars competing for the jackpot in the IAAF Diamond League.

The ISTAF is not only part of the IAAF Diamond League, but also the World Challenge – which gives some idea of this meeting's significance. And it is also Germany's longest-running track and field event, with a history stretching back to 1921, when the first Stadionfest was held in Berlin's Grunewald stadium. Since then, there have been more than 60 meetings, mainly in the Olympic stadium after 1937, but also in the Deutschlandhalle arena or in other Berlin stadiums on a few occasions. Over the years, ISTAF meetings have witnessed the setting of 15 world records, including the first two-metre jump in the women's high jump by Rosemarie Ackermann of East Germany on 26 August 1977. In 2004, 400-metre runner Tonique Williams-Darling from the Bahamas and Swedish triple jumper Christian Olsson together won the Golden League Jackpot here, and the jackpot was won in the 2005 finals by a single competitor: Russia's Tatiana Lebedeva, for her 14.85m triple jump.